The Heartbleed flaw is being fixed more quickly because of the decision to give the bug a memorable name and a cute logo, according to the firm that first identified it.

The flaw was caused by a simple coding error which resulted in passwords and security credentials being leaked from affected websites.

"I really believe that the name and the logo and the website helped fuel the community interest in this," says David Chartier, the CEO of Codenomicon, the security testing firm which found the bug on 3 April.

"The IT community and the press have been important players in getting the word out, and so many people affected have fixed their stuff already," Chartier added. "This went extremely quick, and I think that the fact that it it had a name, had a catchy logo that people remember, really helped fuel the speed with which people became aware of this."

Others agree. "The Heartbleed logo is probably one of the highest ROI [return on investment] uses of [approximately] $200 in the history of software security," writes Patrick McKenzie, founder of Kalzumeus Software.

"Why spend the extra money for a logo? Because it suggests professionalism and dedicated effort, because it will be used exhaustively in media coverage of the vulnerability, because it further deepens the branding association of the vulnerability, the name, the logo, and the canonical web presence, and because it also suggests danger."

The logo, as well as the accompanying website which explained in readable English exactly what Heartbleed entailed, were both created in the days between Codenomicon warning authorities of the bug and it being officially patched.

"We found the bug on April 3, we reported it to the Finnish CERT [a national organisation that takes computer problems and works with other nations to resolve them] on Friday 4," says Chartier. "On Monday CERT Finland reported this to OpenSSL, and on April 7 OpenSSL released the advisory and published the patch. Right after that, we launched the webpage."

Codenomicon discovered the flaw when it was testing its own software. The company makes programs which let developers automatically scan for security leaks, with a model known as "fuzz testing"; when it applied that to its own website, staff discovered the Heartbleed flaw, and very quickly realised that "it was pretty important".

"We attacked our own infrastructure, and we found out that it was pretty serious because when we were getting our memory dumps we could get usernames, passwords, and the crown jewels of the system, the encryption keys… Then we saw that a large portion of the web servers in the world use OpenSSL along with email, instant messing and social media."

It's not all altruism. Chartier foresees a boost in Codenomicon's prospects in the future. "We've obviously got a lot more name recognition than we did before," he says. "But this is a good case that shows that if you proactively check your software, you find the bugs sooner, can fix them faster, and be more secure."